Tag: masculinity

On an early bus ride to work one cold morning, I had a conversation with an old drunkard. The conversation began when he had made a remark of the book I was reading, which happened to be the “Souls of Black folk” by W.E.B Dubois. He remarked how I was reading a very important book, to paraphrase him

“ The black man is lost…..the black man isn’t the gangsta…..the white man is the real gangsta….the black man is weak…you see how they emasculate the black by having him wear dresses and these kids think it’s cool…. The black woman doesn’t respect the black man(as he was saying this he pointed to two black female passengers who were in front of us)” He spoke on until his stop.

This brief conversation left an impression on me. Everything this drunkard old man said wasn’t nothing I haven’t particularly heard before spurted out particularly by older black men. I must say some aspects of his brief speech I actually agree on.

Chiefly that the black man is emasculated. But his emasculation has nothing to do with black men being depicted as being gay or wearing a dress but is because the black man in this country holds no power. A brief definition of masculinity states “possession of the qualities traditionally associated with men”. This is, of course, a very broad definition leaving one to have many interpretations of this. But generally, masculinity is associated with power. Now let’s define power( in the noun sense). In a quick google search, I have came upon two definitions. First, “the ability to do something or act in a particular way, especially as a faculty or quality”, second, “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events”.

Is the black man in this country in possession of either definition. I am in particular interest of the second definition as it is potent to my argument. When asking yourself who are the most powerful people in the world what comes to mind. For most people, it might be a political leader or a business magnet, two groups that exempt the second definition to the fullest. Now consider your typical political or business leader, what else comes to mind? Generally men, who wear suits, that are well spoken, and who possess great intelligence. Men of these positions are not your general ideals of urban masculinity. They are generally not physically imposing or brash in their speech, but yet they hold considerable power in any modern society.

Now when you began to think of the race associated with these types of men it generally tends to be white (i.e Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Elon Musk) of course there are notable exceptions(Barack Obama, Jay-Z), but in general we see the men with all the real power in our society as white men.

In Urban culture masculinity is heavily associated with gangsterism( the exhibition of gangsta behavior, promiscuity with many women, and the ability to murder other men with little remorse), This is something I have encountered many times myself as a black man who grew up in South Jamaica, Queens, NY. Your entire identity is based on not being deemed soft and earning the respect of your peers through the acts of violence. OF course, this isn’t exclusive among inner city blacks( I can think of Machismoism in Latin America as an outward example), but this is dangerously pervasive in the black community among black males.

I believe the contemporary understanding of what it mean to be a man in the black community leads to violence in the inner city, the sexual objectification of black women, and the pervasiveness of homophobia in the black community. I believe that as black men we need to question what it really means to be a man, and if that definition is holding us back from achieving true masculinity i.e power.

The argument has been made that gender is fully a social construct, with no biological merit. I want to argue against this point. First, I do consolidate to the fact that there are obvious cultural artifices in constructing how the two sexes behave. Pink is for girls while blue is for boys, Ashley is a girl’s name and john is a boys name, etc, these are all examples of gender norms put in place by society. But there is also certain predisposition that is fully biologically based. Point one, men and women have varying degrees of hormonal difference. Men on average have far higher levels of testosterone than women and women on average have far higher levels of estrogen. Our emotions and behaviors are heavily based on chemicals in our brain. For example, higher levels of testosterone lead to a higher instance of aggression, assertiveness, and violence. Estrogen makes individuals more empathetic. These two chemical being unequally distributed among the sexes leads to both having two different biological dispositions and behavior.

There has many who point out how Gender roles are socially based. But I want to argue that gender roles are a part of human evolution. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species which means that there is the physiological difference between the two. First men are on average 3 inches taller and weigh 25% more than women. Nature doesn’t just make species sexual dimorphic unless there was some sexual are surviving benefits from it. Case in point, a book written by Leonard Shlain “Sex, Time, and Power”(A must read) Shlain( a surgeon) theorizes that because women on general suffer from Iron deficiency(due to the fact they lose blood every month from menstrual cycles, as well as their red blood cells produce less Iron), and the fact women have to go through eight months gestation and six years weaning a newborn child. Women needed men to help them attain Iron by providing her with meat, in return the man got copulation.

For those(particularly feminist) who are skeptical about this. Imagine 150 thousand years ago, living in the Savannah of East Africa being a pregnant mother(let’s imagine 6 months) trying to go hunting. You would put yourself as well as your child at great risk. Sure you would be able to go forging, but subsisting on local vegetation alone will not be enough for you are your gestating child. Men would have to go out and hunt while the woman remained in the village. This arrangement would exist for all of humanity until the emergence of civilization around 10 thousand years ago.

With the beginning of civilization, humans moved away from solely surviving on wild game and vegetation but to domesticating both crop and animals. Many of the roles that woman had previously still remained somewhat the same, because women still got pregnant and had to attend to her young children. Men now had to attend to the field are face starvation. We see the emergence of patriarchy in this time period. Men having a physical advantage over women, took responsibility of keeping the society safe from outsiders as well as seeing to all the intense labor required for agriculture.

Feminism as we know it wouldn’t become a serious ideology in Human affairs until the industrial revolution. For good reason. Humanity(at least in the west) weren’t reliant on muscle power but that of stem and steel to grow its food. Women could go out for work. This new era of technological advancement is the only reason feminism was able to emerge!